The online fashion retailer About You Cracks Billion In Sales

The online fashion retailer About You generated sales of more than one billion euros for the first time. Revenues rose in the 2020/21 financial year by the end of February by 57 percent to 1.17 billion euros, as the Otto subsidiary announced. "We took our chance in the Corona crisis," said company boss Tarek Müller. According to insiders, the Zalando competitor is aiming for the stock exchange and could be valued at around three billion euros. Müller did not want to comment on this and simply said: "We have great investors. All doors are open to us." In addition to the retail group Otto, the financial investor Heartland of the Danish entrepreneur Anders Holch Povlsen is also involved in About You. Povlsen is a bestseller (Vero Moda) and has invested in Zalando and Asos, among others. Similar to Zalando, the company, which was founded seven years ago in Hamburg, is benefiting from closed fashion stores during the Corona crisis and the increasingly normal way of shopping on the Internet. The Hamburg-based company, which is active in 23 markets, now has 30 million active customers per month. In contrast to the Berlin competitor, which has been listed for years and is now considered a DAX candidate, About You focuses primarily on the younger generation. The smartphone app is used by some like a fashion magazine, said Müller. The company boss is also confident about the time after the Corona crisis: "The online fashion trade will get a tailwind because there will be more occasions to buy fashion again - for parties, weddings and meetings with friends." In the current year, Müller wants to "increase sales in southern and northern Europe more strongly", expand further and invest in technology. About You has been offering its own technology platform as a white label product for some time and has won Marco Polo and Depot as customers, among others. Last year sales in the B2B segment increased by 61 percent. In view of the strong growth - in the past twelve months About You started from home office in 13 countries - the company is still in the red, but was profitable for the first time on the basis of adjusted operating profit in the fourth quarter. In the 20/21 financial year, the operating loss shrank by 49 percent to 36 million euros.